I also had one girl (on her second day) just assume she could leave a half hour early because she took a half hour lunch. She argued that she just needed to put in her 8 hours and she didn't see why she'd need to be here until 5 since she's already done with her 8.
I don't understand why this is so horrible. There has to be some limit on hours, right? Obviously, this sort of thing is best addressed while interviewing for a job (learning about how flexible a place is) and she should not have assumed it's ok, but for many office jobs I don't see why employers can't be more flexible as long as the work gets done. People have mobile devices to stay in touch. Work invades home life on the regular so I don't get why employers can't be similarly accommodating. Maybe some are but it seems like employees are the ones bending over backwards most of the time. I can't begrudge younger people trying to bend workplace rules to be more reasonable.
Agreed. If this is supposed to be an example of how horrible young people are in the workplace, I say bring on more young people! Maybe they will usher in an era of greater work/life balance.
Btw, on my first day at my job my office said/volunteered "feel feel to take 30 min lunches to leave earlier/come in later."
Meanwhile my H's new job is totally opposed to this sort of scheduling and they don't give a sh*t that such flexible scheduling would make daycare drop off and carpooling easier for us in the am. But we suck apparently for even thinking this way.
I agree that it's not necessarily inappropriate. In particular if someone has only ever worked in hourly positions, this request would not only be normal and acceptable, but employers might even require that the person let it be known so they aren't at risk for either paying overtime or wage/hour violations.
Yeah but even if you're working hourly it doesn't mean you can make your own hours. If your hours are 9-5 with a 1 hour lunch, you can't just decide to leave early because you took a half lunch instead of a full. If you're expected to be there til 5 then you should be there til 5, just take your full lunch.
I read the post to be that DM was complaining that the new girl was complaining that she thought she only needed to put in 8 hours, not that DM was complaining that the girl was setting her own hours. Either way though, it sounds like the problem could very well have been unclear expectations and not that the new person was lazy and entitled.
I totally agree. My parents both have excellent work ethics, and also excellent interpersonal communication skills. My mom has mentioned that she's NOT a "people person," but taught herself to be one. (Same with being a "morning person" and getting up at an appropriate time to get things done/ready and get to work on time.) [/quote]
Interpersonal skills aren't that easy to teach yourself though. It's not like you can just get a book and learn it. You have to be able to notice and correctly interpret social cues and respond in an appropriate manner, which can be a little tricky to learn.
Post by Daria Morgandorffer on Sept 20, 2012 12:42:34 GMT -5
The problem with 8 hour girl is that A) I was very clear in the hiring process that she would be required to work 8-5 with lunch from 12-1 and B) She didn't bother even asking if she COULD do this. I needed her to help with coverage which is why her hours are set. When the 4:30 person needed to leave, there was nobody to take calls because chick had already skipped out.
To clarify, I actually plan on teaching new employees about 75% of what they need to know to the job. Most people do not come in with appropriate knowledge of clinical trials. 1/4 of my staff come from a different client group in my company and occassionally I'll get someone from a competitor.
I also don't expect expert Excel use--using the sum function would be pretty good actually. I do have people say they feel like experts and then don't know what a pivot table is. I would say I ride the line between beginning and intermediate and use pivot tables all the time.
I actually am a fan of a well-rounded college education, but I don't know why that couldn't include a seminar on the working world and basic Microsoft office skills.
When finding candidates, Integrity is actually the most important quality. I think next is self-sufficiency and a record of learning new skills, figuring things out themselves. Next is probably a positive attitude and ability to take constructive criticism. Staff need to be self-motivated to succeed and continue to grow their careers.
I think a lot of employees would be helped by networking and talking to people in their industry of choice--most don't do this. I feel that schools could definitely help in this area too.
I have never had anyone fail our drug test in my office. So probably out of 50-60 hires?
Yeah but even if you're working hourly it doesn't mean you can make your own hours. If your hours are 9-5 with a 1 hour lunch, you can't just decide to leave early because you took a half lunch instead of a full. If you're expected to be there til 5 then you should be there til 5, just take your full lunch.
I figured she was salaried. In which case, she doesn't even necessarily GET a lunch.
ETA: Also, I will say that kind of "I'm leaving early" shit used to drive me crazy when I worked at a bigger firm. Support staff is there to support - a function they cannot do if they leave at 4:30 instead of 5:00.
I'm team Daria on this one. When you have a secretary, you have certain expectations about when they will be available to you. You figure there will be some mid-day point when they won't be available, but if you have an end of day emergency, they will be there because they are, in fact, scheduled to work to the end of the day. The whole, "I'm coming in at 7:00 [when no one will be here] so I can leave at 3:00 [two hours before we "close"]" and "I'm not going to take a lunch so I can leave at 4:00" That shit used to drive me fucking crazy. I do not need you at 7:00 in the morning when court is closed and no one is in the office. I do need you at 4:00 p.m. when everyone is trying to complete projects and get their shit done before they go home for the day.
Oh, that was such a pet peeve of mine. Yeah, I could say more, but I'll leave it at that.
I'm on this team as well. It is very difficult to get everything done when there is only one support person left at 4:30. Office hours are 8:00-5:00. It is frustrating to need help at 8:00 and someone has decided to come in late, or need help at 4:30 and find that someone has decided to leave early.
Yeah but even if you're working hourly it doesn't mean you can make your own hours. If your hours are 9-5 with a 1 hour lunch, you can't just decide to leave early because you took a half lunch instead of a full. If you're expected to be there til 5 then you should be there til 5, just take your full lunch.
I figured she was salaried. In which case, she doesn't even necessarily GET a lunch.
ETA: Also, I will say that kind of "I'm leaving early" shit used to drive me crazy when I worked at a bigger firm. Support staff is there to support - a function they cannot do if they leave at 4:30 instead of 5:00.
I'm team Daria on this one. When you have a secretary, you have certain expectations about when they will be available to you. You figure there will be some mid-day point when they won't be available, but if you have an end of day emergency, they will be there because they are, in fact, scheduled to work to the end of the day. The whole, "I'm coming in at 7:00 [when no one will be here] so I can leave at 3:00 [two hours before we "close"]" and "I'm not going to take a lunch so I can leave at 4:00" That shit used to drive me fucking crazy. I do not need you at 7:00 in the morning when court is closed and no one is in the office. I do need you at 4:00 p.m. when everyone is trying to complete projects and get their shit done before they go home for the day.
Oh, that was such a pet peeve of mine. Yeah, I could say more, but I'll leave it at that.
Does anyone know when office hours stopped being 9-5 and moved to 8-5?
The eighties? I know my Grandmother worked 9-5 for the longest time.
I work 9-5 most days now and don't take a lunch. I fucking love it since I commute nearly 3 hours per day. This may make me a hypocrite, but I have paid my 12-hour per day and coming in on Sundays to get promoted dues and I don't feel bad about it.
Does anyone know when office hours stopped being 9-5 and moved to 8-5?
8-5 is 9 hours so when you deduct the unpaid lunch hour, it's becomes your 8 hour work day.
Right, but it used to be that working hours were 9-5 and you got paid for lunch. Then it changed and companies decided to squeeze an extra hour out of people. I'm just wondering when that happened.
8-5 is 9 hours so when you deduct the unpaid lunch hour, it's becomes your 8 hour work day.
Right, but it used to be that working hours were 9-5 and you got paid for lunch. Then it changed and companies decided to squeeze an extra hour out of people. I'm just wondering when that happened.
8-5 is 9 hours so when you deduct the unpaid lunch hour, it's becomes your 8 hour work day.
Right but people used to still get lunches when they worked 9-5 though right? At least a half hour?
The last time I worked 9-5 I got a paid lunch hour. When I started working in construction the offices usually started working at 7, I just accepted 8-5 without even thinking about it because it was better than being there at 7 (my first job in the industry had a 3 hour commute each way, so simply getting the extra hour seemed amazing to me)
SBP and kadams - I see what you're saying, but I can't tell if you're annoyed when someone leaves at 4:30 only when they just make a snap decision to leave early, or also when they schedule the early leave time in advance.
Some of this I think is also the employers fault. The unwillingness to train or work with people who have great soft skills but don't fit every technical criteria is just as short sighted IMO.
We've had 2 manufacturing positions open for the last year and this is a big part of the reason why. The president wants to pay next to nothing and the CTO doesn't want to spend loads of time training someone who doesn't come with all the skills needed.
In the CTO's defense we're small, with not a lot of room for upward movement and shitty benefits. If he were to spend time training them, they will up and leave as soon as they have some experience under their belt. Years ago people were more likely to stay at their jobs long term and while it still happens, the chances of an employee changing jobs is far more likely today. I think that makes it harder for businesses to want to invest in those without all the experience, but on the employee end, it often makes sense to jump ship.
Post by Daria Morgandorffer on Sept 20, 2012 14:24:46 GMT -5
There have been quite a few people that have hated me since I started working here because I actually make them work their schedule. The people that are being supported, however, love me.
Support/admin jobs are generally not conducive to flex schedules- they need to be there when they are needed, and generally when they are needed=when they want to be gone.
I worked at a Big Four accounting firm that did flex schedules really well. We had flex fridays in the summer, and there was a calendar for the whole summer where everyone on the team could sign up for a Friday they wanted to take off (you could work 10 hours M-Th then take all Friday or work 9 hours M-Th and take half a day Friday). Only a certain number of people could take off each Friday (like 3 or I think) so it was first-come, first-serve or people could work it out within themselves to trade and such. It probably worked well because we had good people who didn't try to take every Friday or refuse to work with other. That way you could see exactly when people were scheduled to be out and work around it.
Yeah but even if you're working hourly it doesn't mean you can make your own hours. If your hours are 9-5 with a 1 hour lunch, you can't just decide to leave early because you took a half lunch instead of a full. If you're expected to be there til 5 then you should be there til 5, just take your full lunch.
I figured she was salaried. In which case, she doesn't even necessarily GET a lunch.
Right but my point was, if this was her first salaried job ever, she might not know that. Let's say you have only ever worked retail jobs, and your employer is very clear that you need to tell them if your lunch break is cut short for any reason (which does happen) because they'd rather be short staffed for the last part of the day than have to pay overtime. Thus, based on the facts we first knew, it was entirely possible that this person was still be following orders set by their previous boss, and believed that her new employer would have the same rules.
If the nest has taught me anything, it's that few people have any grasp on employment law. It is not at all shocking to me that a 22 year old would believe that the labor rules that applied in one work setting would apply in all, or that a 22 year old working their first salaried position would not implicitly know what it meant to be salaried.
Now that DM has explained a bit more, I do think the worker's attitude was strange. But, my H hires and works with a lot of people just out of college and is constantly frustrated by the clock in/clock out, job is done at 5 on the nose mentality, but he forgets that they've never worked a salaried position and are still trying to figure out what that means.
SBP and kadams - I see what you're saying, but I can't tell if you're annoyed when someone leaves at 4:30 only when they just make a snap decision to leave early, or also when they schedule the early leave time in advance.
I personally have seen the "flex schedules" abused so much when it comes to support staff, that my opinion is never, ever, ever. If you need to leave a half hour early, you lose a half hour of pay. You do not get to come in a half hour early when you will have no work because no one is there, or skip part of your lunch (which violates OSHA regs).
This is a really touchy subject for me because it was just out of control at my last firm. The woman who handled our accounts payable theoretically worked 7-3. So the person who handled the bank accounts, didn't even work bank hours. We had secretaries who wanted to make up hours working from home, receptionists who would turn the phones over to the auto answer at 4:00 or 4:30, and all kinds of crazy "it's not a personal day because I'm going to come in and do filing on Saturday" shit. Plus, that accounts receivable person was actually working 7:30 to 2:50 - she was banking on being the first one in the office even at 7:30 and then wanted to catch a 3:05 train, so couldn't eve stay until 3:00. She eventually got caught.
I am pretty sympathetic to the fact that Americans work too much and too hard and it's bad for our health, our children, our marriages, and our economy... But in my opinion that is a completely separate issue from the one that Daria is addressing. If your hours are 8-5, they are 8-5. not 7:30 - 4:30, not 10 - 7. EIGHT TO FIVE.
The problem in your instance sounds more like poor management, not flex schedules.
Anecdote alert: I was a paralegal, my firm tried forcing people to adhere to a rigid schedule and it created a major accounting and legal issues that the project failed after one pay cycle, because the support staff was regularly called on to work overtime.
To illustrate, my hours were technically 9-6. Let's say I came in at 10 because I had a doctor appointment. So I have to take an hour vacation. But then, the attorney needed me to stay late to help her with a project. Which meant I'd have to get paid for that extra hour because I was non-exempt (as any support staff would be). It was completely stupid for them to force me to take an hour vacation and then also pay out an extra hour to me.
It made more sense to have an office manager manage schedules, get flex arrangements approved in advance, require those seeking an alternate arrangement to speak to their supervising attorneys and arrange for coverage, etc. Not every solution is going to work in every office but an out of control flex scheduling issue is as much a creature of management than it is of the people working them.
ETA: and I don't know if support staff gets the same advantage of picking start time as the attorneys but we have 3 shifts of support staffing, early, normal, and late. It's not really that big of a deal.
There have been quite a few people that have hated me since I started working here because I actually make them work their schedule. The people that are being supported, however, love me.
Support/admin jobs are generally not conducive to flex schedules- they need to be there when they are needed, and generally when they are needed=when they want to be gone.
I still cannot get over the secretaries at my last firm proposing with a completely straight face that because attorneys can work from home, they should be offered the option to work from home, too.
HR then sent and actual fucking email to all of the attorneys asking what they thought of this idea. I think I responded something to the effect that I had absolutely no objection whatsoever as long as my secretary could still answer her phone, do my filing, keep my schedule, and send out my correspondence. From home.
WTF, people. W.T.F.
The only reason my old firm never let the support staff work from home was because of security reasons regarding the work we did.
I was really freaking lucky working in a west coast IP law firm. We did have somewhat flexible hours and HR did a lot to protect the LAs and other support staff from having to take the fall for attorney error. The firm I worked at before that let the staff take the fall for attorney error and then they wondered why they lost all the good support staff to other firms.
On topic, though. In my years working in law, I noticed that the worst workers were the older ones, like 50 or older. They were the least likely to put forth the effort to learn new ways of doing things, including computer-related new things, and simply being able to wrap their minds around new rules in patent law. "It's always been done that way." was said a lot and it made me crazy because then their work would get pawned off on those of us who bothered to learn the new ways.
And then there was the LA who decided to up and take a weeklong vacation without checking her docket. Luckily someone else checked it and discovered a date she would've missed that would've literally cost our client millions of dollars. She'd come to our firm with over 20 years of experience in patent law. I called her "box of hair" because she was as dumb as a box of hair.
ETA: and I don't know if support staff gets the same advantage of picking start time as the attorneys but we have 3 shifts of support staffing, early, normal, and late. It's not really that big of a deal.
I actually love that idea for support staff. But we didn't have three shifts. And we didn't share secretaries. At all. So if your secretary decided to leave at 3:00, you were just SOL until 5:00 and there was a lot of that. It worked very poorly. They only had to clear it with HR not with the attorneys and it was rampantly abused.
Interesting. I worked at a big law firm for a summer while in college (I was a "secretarial floater" - fancy!), and there were multiple support shifts like heyjude described. In my limited law experience, I figured that was the norm for big law firms - though I don't know how big your law firm was, SBP.
Post by niemand88f on Sept 20, 2012 15:17:06 GMT -5
My job has somewhat flexible hours- we just have to be here between 10 and 4. We can even come in later / leave earlier if we have an appointment, but are expected to only do that rarely. I'm only 24 and this is my first salaried, "real" job. I really appreciate the flexibility we have, and know I'm very lucky.
Yet, those of my CW who are even more recent graduates than me, STILL can't seem to make it in by 10AM. They'll start out adhering to the schedule, then gradually it slips until they're waltzing in right before 11. My manager has to send strongly worded emails every few months about this. And you can bet those that come in so late probably don't leave at that start time + 8.5-9 hours. :@
I can't even find interns to hire. INTERNS. Someone to answer the phone and not be an asshole. The kids who all look great on paper have horrible interpersonal skills. I decided it would be better to have no interns than ones that I constantly have to correct, have bad attitudes, and cause problems in the office.
Post by basilosaurus on Sept 20, 2012 17:32:10 GMT -5
Let me chime in as a former excel instructor, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Oh, the stories I have. (pesca, how much you offering?)
You can pay $250 to take a class (or your company could, if they hadn't destroyed the training budget), and in 1 day, I'll get you to functioning in a beginner class. Not expert, not intermediate, but basic skills. I regularly had self proclaimed "experts" come into that beginner class and not know how to use any function. Literally, people would use calculators and type the answers in. But, they'd been doing it for 10 years, so they knew the program.
Absolute references occurred before lunch, just so their brains could rest
So, how are those "experts" supposed to even know they're completely lacking in skills if they've never heard anything about a pivot chart? Sometimes it takes a lot of knowledge to recognize what you don't know.
So, anyway, my "kids these days" drug testing story. A friend of mine moved to Hawaii recently, just on a whim to start a new life. 27, college educated, had worked in a professional setting before. She interviewed for a job she really wanted and was qualified for. She got promising signs of an impending offer. And she toked before the offer. How stupid! She called me in a panic b/c she got the job but had to drug test and figured I'd know how to beat it b/c I'm sciencey and stuff. She did actually pass, not due to using tap water or synthetic pee, but still... come on!
As for soft vs hard vs training... what gets me about job hunting, and I've done it in more than one field, is the requirement for a beginning level position to have a year or two of experience. And it's an automated rejection if you don't have it, but if you lie to get your way to an interview where you can show that lack of knowledge but an ability to think, to learn, might be more valuable than a drone with a year of experience, well, you just lied on your app which is bad. Ahem. Sorry, rant.
Post by LoveTrains on Sept 20, 2012 19:21:23 GMT -5
My first job out of college was as an admin asst. We worked 9-5 with an unpaid lunch and got paid hourly. I used to love staying late - and even better was when we had evening and weekend events so I could get tons of overtime. That 35 hour workweek was completely spoiled me though. Luckily at my job now our standard day is 8-4. I normally stay until at least 4:30 and many days stay much, much later, but it is nice to peace out at 3:45 pm on a Friday.